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User blog:HPCStAlbans/Finding a Location…….
4 years ago I found myself coming to the end of a journey disillusioned with running clubs for others. I’d changed careers as a 26 year old moving from the printing and stationery industry to peruse a career in the fitness industry in an attempt to turn a passion into a career. This meant walking away from the opportunity of working towards taking over my family’s business and the nice salary I’d become accustomed to, but like many young men I’d drifted into a job rather than following a chosen career, it certainly wasn’t what I saw myself doing until the day I retired. I’d been training with weights since I was 13 years old when I started lifting weights to help control my weight, after a long summer holiday spent being far to sedentary as most of my mates went away for extended breaks leaving me with little to do but watch “Why don’t You” and eat digestives and energy dense food. Having qualified as a fitness instructor I proceeded to work my way through the ranks of the fitness industry. I’ve been a fitness instructor, personal trainer, and health & fitness manager running some of the countries largest gym. I’d managed the fitness department of David Lloyd Chigwell a club with twelve thousand members and went on to set up the fitness department of the now head office and flagship club in Hatfield. I’d been given the opportunity to employ the fitness team, children fitness and swimming program staff and implement some of my own policy in the set up of the business as the club was still a building site when I started the role. After the challenge of running large fitness departments and working to find the balance of keeping line managers happy with balancing department accounts and trying to provide the highest possible levels of customer service, which is always a compromise when working for the large commercial industry players. The next logical step was to run the whole club, so I moved into general management running Fitness First Milton Keynes and St Albans. It was when I managed Fitness First St Albans that I realised I was never going to be allowed to run the club to the best of my ability, when regional managers are obsessed with driving new member sales at the expense of working to keep the existing members happy you know things aren’t right. An example of this is taking 9 months to replace a broken mirror in the free weights area because a regional manager did not want to spend £600 to fix it. Remember there are two ways of making profit, one sell more or two spend less, and when manager’s salaries can be doubled in a month by driving profit sometimes people make decisions based on their own rewards rather than what is right for the members. Additionally some of these large chains accept that over 90% of their members will leave annually, so rather than genuinely work to reduce this figure they accept it and simple focus on getting new members to replace those that will leave. Now if you’re reading this and you run your own business I’m sure you would agree this is not the ideal business scenario to be in, when I first started working in business in the late 80’s the ideal scenario was to spend little on advertising as business grew from delivering great customer service and great products to retain your client base and drive free referrals. This maybe a bit idealistic however I firmly believe people appreciate these values and a business can still prosper with these values at its core, well time will tell I suppose. Anyway rant over and back to the story. So disillusioned I went looking for a location to see if I could do things better by myself, and have the opportunity to provide this elusive truly great customer experience. Well I found the perfect site on the fringes of town between St Albans and Wheathampstead, or so I thought, it ticked all the boxes, location, large enough for my business model but still affordable, it’s own designate parking and spill over car park should it be needed, near enough to residential areas so potential members could walk or cycle to the facility, it had it all. The only thing it didn’t have was the permission to use it for leisure use as it was an industrial unit on a small estate in an area designated for employment by St Albans District council. Not to worry I though I’ll speak to the council and apply for a change of use to enable it to be used for leisure. After several phone calls I established that this was theoretically possible although it may prove challenging due to it’s location in a designated employment area. Well I’m up for a challenge I though so let’s talk to the landlord, here comes the first hurdle I fell at, the landlord was not prepared to work with me and take the property off the market whilst I sought a change of use, and I was not prepared to take the financial risk of appointing a town planner to perusing a change of use with the risk of the landlord renting the property to another tenant and me effectively throwing a couple of grand down the drain. So dreams were put on hold……… Category:Blog posts Category:Health & Fitness